Restrictive Covenants

Belldale Addition was a 1915 revision of Wickliffe Subdivision, adding 106 lots on parts of Robertson, Sherman, Bassett, Lincoln, Owsley and Menifee. When a tract of Belldale was sold by Realty Associates to a new buyer in December 1921, the deed specified: 

This deed only conveyed two lots, but the language in the section below, setting out the minimum cost of lots in various parts of the subdivision, makes it clear that the restrictive language applies to the whole subdivision—all of Victory Avenue—and not just two lots.  We also looked at another deed for Beechland subdivision, and it contained the same language.

Transcription of the brochure panel above: 

Mentelle Park is the only perfectly appointed and finished residence Park ever attempted in Lexington. Its planning, execution and completion is the result of a careful study of the residence parks in all the well known park cities of the United States. The double driveways known as "The Esplanade" are model macadam roads, with beautiful ornamental parks between. The streets are curbed with Bedford Stone. The parks are also curbed. Concrete sidewalks, sewer mains and water mains are laid on both sides, thus preventing tearing up the street. Splendid forest and shade trees are found on every lot. There is just one broad, open street, with no short streets or cross streets or alleys. Every lot fronts on the park and they are all of the same high class, thus assuring desirable residents. Every building erected must cost not less than three times the cost of the lot, thus assuring nothing but high-class residences. No Negroes can ever own property or live in the park. No business house can be erected within its limits. No adjacent or near by Negro settlements. No near by steam railroads. Two squares from street car line at present. Remember, this park is opposite the McDowell estate, the most magnificent property around Lexington and owned by the most elegant people, and the future of which is self-assuring to every one knowing the place and the people. The property shows for itself. It needs no booming or boosting. You have only to see it for verification of the plain facts set forth above.  

D. F. Frazee, President; M. C. Alford, Vice-President.                 THE MENTELLE COMPANY, Incorporated             
          Offices:—Hernando Building and at the Park

Mentelle Park advertising brochure courtesy of Lexington Public Library. www.lexpublib.org/digital-archives    

We reviewed two deeds covering four lots in Hollywood Terrace. These properties were sold by Security Trust Company in 1923, and both deeds included the same restrictive language, which applies to all of "said Hollywood Terrace."

Forest Park, Suburban Court, Goodrich 

The deed we reviewed for Suburban Court, dated May 1, 1923 (not pictured), sets out minimum dwelling costs for various sections of the subdivision, leading us to believe the restrictive language applies to the entire subdivision. In addition to the racially restrictive language we have seen so often, this deed also prohibits selling or leasing the property "to any corporation having negroes as stockholders."

The document below, concerning Goodrich Avenue, is a bit unusual in that it is not exactly a deed but rather an agreement among all owners of lots on Goodrich.

Rosemill Subdivision

Finding Restrictive Covenants in Lexington

Racially restrictive covenants are clauses within deeds, so one has to read the deed for a particular property in order to learn if there is any restrictive covenant affecting that property. 

Every time a property changes hands a new deed is drafted, incorporating most of the language from the previous deed. If the property has changed ownership since 1948 (when Shelley v. Kraemer was decided), any previous racially restrictive covenant may not be restated in the newer deed or deeds. If the property has changed hands since 1968 (when the Fair Housing Act was passed), the newer deeds will almost certainly leave out any previous racially restrictive language. In either case the researcher must go back to the previous deed, or the one before that, back to when restrictive language first appears. Often, as in the case of most examples we cited above, that language appeared either the first time the land was subdivided or the first time the subdivided land was sold. 

This process can be quite time-consuming. Organizations with paid staff in some other communities have been able to map restrictive covenants for the entire community; in several other communities the work is in progress. Here are two examples:

Mapping Prejudice in Minneapolis, a project of the University of Minnesota libraries, has a several-person staff and enlisted the help of over 3,000 volunteers who spent 14,000 hours in researching deeds and creating the map of racial covenants in Hennepin County. They used character recognition software to search out racial language; then volunteers read the text flagged by the computer. You can see the results of their work at this website:  https://mappingprejudice.umn.edu/

Segregated Seattle, a project of the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project at the University of Washington, has four staff people, as well as numerous university students who do the research as part of their coursework. Since 2005 they have found restrictive covenants affecting 15–20,000 properties. The Washington legislature recently approved funding for the project, and the work is nearing completion. The relevant section of their website can be found at https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants.htm.

Not having the resources of projects like those in Minneapolis and Seattle, we knew we could not study the deeds for all of Fayette County. We chose a small sample, selecting specific subdivisions for review, and choosing addresses within those subdivisions more or less randomly. 

Once we had identified the neighborhoods where we wanted to search, we selected individual addresses more or less at random. We then found and read the deeds, as described above, and often found that the restrictive covenants applied not just to the specific address but to the entire subdivision.   

We did not search for deeds in the city's central core because, given the quasi-integrated nature of Lexington's late-19th and early-20th century settlement, and as explained earlier, identifying the White and Black blocks would have been too time-consuming. We hope the central core will be included in future research.

Searching Your Own Deed

If you are a homeowner, it is possible to find out whether your own deed includes unsavory and illegal restrictions. It may take more research than simply reading your deed, which may refer to but not spell out older restrictions. A visit to the County Clerk's office, and good help from people who work there, is worth a try. As we noted above, you are most likely to find restrictive covenants if your neighborhood was developed before 1948, although some covenants might exist for areas developed up to 1968. We did not find any, but we did not search in neighborhoods developed after 1948.

For properties that were initially subject to restrictive covenants, newer deeds that don't repeat the offensive racial language may still incorporate it by reference. For example, in a 1970 deed for one of the Hollywood Terrace properties the following language is found: "...this conveyance is made subject to... all restrictions conditions and easements affecting the said property which appear of record in the Fayette County Clerk's office" (Deed Book 1001 p. 353). Even when such language is present, however, racially restrictive covenants can no longer be enforced in court. 

As described here and elsewhere, getting a restriction removed from one's own homeowner's deed can be arduous to impossible, even when the restriction itself is no longer legal. Recently change has begun in a few places to make removal less difficult. State legislatures in some states, including Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, and California, have passed legislation making it easier for homeowners to remove race-based restrictions from their deeds.